Michael Reagan: Why Vladimir Putin is still laughing

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.

So who was the big winner in Wednesday’s televised street fight at the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Was it the veteran D.C. lawyer, the brilliant and unflappable Attorney General William Barr?

Was it the rude, permanently Trump-deranged, visibly stupid Democratic senators who treated Barr like a war criminal?

Or was it the committee’s star chairman, the eloquent, F-bomb dropping Sen. Lindsay Graham?

Or was it none of the above?

The Democratic senators fought dirty, but there were no knock outs.

Barr took all the slander, name calling and calls for him to resign from nasty Kamala Harris and Hawaii’s official state embarrassment Mazie Hirono, and he counter-punched with facts and quoted the appropriate laws.

Fox News, the White House, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Democrats, conservative talk radio and the MSNBC-CNN-NYT community of ethically challenged journalists each think their side was the one that won.

We’ll see.

In the long run, I think the big winner on Wednesday will turn out to be President Trump — in 2020.

But for now, the biggest winner was Vladimir Putin.

The Senate hearing on TV was further proof that the Russian dictator’s efforts to create chaos in American politics by messing with the 2016 election were still paying dividends three years later.

The public release of the barely redacted Mueller Report has only stirred up more political chaos and divisiveness, mainly because it didn’t end the way deranged Dems and the liberal media always dreamed it would - with Trump on trial for treason.

Trump has been officially cleared of Russian collusion/conspiracy charges and obstruction.

And now, ironically, it’s Democrats like Hillary and some of the patriotically challenged appointees who ran the Obama FBI and other intelligence agencies who are going to learn how it feels to have to hire a four-figure-an-hour defense lawyer and cooperate with FBI prosecutors.

Meanwhile, as Democrats desperately look for ways to keep the Mueller Report and the myth of Trump’s treason and obstruction of justice from falling off the front page, the USA has some really important stuff it should be dealing with.

Remember the crisis on the southern border? What’s happening in Venezuela? The trade deal with China?

Every day that the Democrats hold a hearing on the Mueller Report, or try to get Trump’s income tax returns, is another day Washington doesn’t address those serious national issues.

I can hear Putin laughing at America now — and rightly so. His strategy is still working. He and his Russian chaos-makers are still winning.

Look how deeply the Russians and Cuba are involved in the current crisis in Venezuela. Congress should be focused on that problem — and important things like immigration or infrastructure.

But House Democrats and the liberal media can’t quit trying to find new ways to keep President Trump from being reelected.

They know they can’t hurt Trump, so they’re trying to destroy his attorney general’s character by calling him a liar and a puppet of the president.

Barr was smart not to go before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

It was a set-up, a political trial, an inquisition designed to trap him or show him up and give the hysterics at CNN something new to wring their hands about for a few days.

And anyway, Barr didn’t need to waste any more time with the House’s delusional Democrats.

As the new attorney general, he has a lot of more important work to do.

He’s got to investigate how a rogue gang of Obama/Hillary Democrats running the FBI were able to use a dossier from Russia they knew was fake to get a secret federal court to give them permission to launch a surveillance investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign.

And along the way he has to dig up answers to some questions that might be shocking.

Questions like: How did that sleazy operation got started? Who in the upper reaches of the Obama administration knew it was going on? And whose idea it was to smear Trump with fake Russian dirt?

I wouldn’t be too surprised if Barr finds out the Russians helped Hillary and the Democrats do it.

Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.